


A playfully dangerous stranger.

by Kaesteranya



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:09:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesteranya/pseuds/Kaesteranya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not exactly the one you know anymore, is he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A playfully dangerous stranger.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set some years after the end of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and after the manga of XXXHOLiC, with details from Chapters 180-187 taken into consideration.
> 
> The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for May 16, 2009.

  
There’s one of them every month, at least, and regardless of whether they are male or female, young or old, each one of them has the same _look_ , that same hunger that, if left unsatisfied, will swallow whatever it comes in contact with.

  
This current one’s female, a young thing from their sister school. Stammers when she talks, shifts her weight from foot to foot an awful lot, blushes whenever she looks up and into his eyes. Her own eyes, though, are empty.

  
Doumeki turns away.

  
“Come inside.”

  
He hears Maru and Moro long before he ever sets foot in the kitchen, catches, as he turns around the corner, the pitter-patter of their feet on the tiled floor and their sing-song voices ringing off the names of the ingredients and steps behind making rice balls. Another sound joins in as soon as he opens the door: the sharp, rhythmic dicing of a knife through stalks of celery.

  
“You’re up early,” the one with the knife says, without turning around. Doumeki folds his arms across his chest, crosses one foot over the other, leans against the doorframe. Maru and Moro bounce over to him, chanting his name, tugging at his sleeve.

  
“There’s another one.”

  
“Of course there is.”

  
The next chop leaves the knife embedded in the board. The master of the house turns to wash his hands. Doumeki catches a glimpse of pale, slender wrists as the latter shifts his sleeves. That distracts him a little, because when he blinks he’s looking into a pair of mismatched eyes right after another pair of lips touches his own and that’s not supposed to happen.

  
“Good morning, by the way.”

  
He’s alone in the kitchen before he knows it, and he turns around just in time to see Maru and Moro bouncing off, and the ends of a chongsam disappear around the corner. Doumeki moves inside to fetch the tea set. There’s a ghost in the corridors he walks through sometime later, after he’s changed into something a little more suitable and gathered everything he needs – he can feel the weight of her absence pressing down on her shoulders, fancies the gentle bite of her nails on his shoulders.

  
He knows that he’s imagining it, of course. It’s been years since anything vaguely supernatural has dared to get close to him.

  
Doumeki steps out to the patio, follows the path over to the area overlooking the garden; there are voices just beyond the _shoji_ doors behind him. The girl he let into the shop, and the master. He lays his tools out – bowls, cups, grater, mixer, all the other tiny little and delicate things – and starts his work, to the lilt and turn of their conversation. There are cherry blossom petals in the second cup of tea he’s made by the time the door opens, and the master steps out, cloaked in black and the scent of opium.

  
“It’s too hot today. Buy some sake later, will you?”

  
“You drank a lot last night.”

  
“And I can drink more. It’s not like there’s much else to do, between customers. Unless, of course, you had something in mind?”

  
Watanuki, he’s smirking as he turns to Doumeki, lifts the tea cup to his lips. Only, this one’s not quite Watanuki anymore, is he? This one, with the pipe and the kimono and the glinting eyes and paper-thin smile.

  
“Well? _Do_ you have something in mind?”

  
As he’s taking the cup/pressing Watanuki’s body up against the wooden beam/kissing Watanuki’s mouth, Doumeki realizes that these days, he can hardly blame the customers he takes into the shop for the split second of fear that they feel, when they first turn their eyes up and look upon their best dream come true/worst nightmare they’ll ever have. He lives that moment at least once every day, in the small things they do together or the nights they spend, sharing one bed.

  
Sometimes, he wonders why he keeps coming back.  



End file.
